HE touched down and lit up Tyneside with his first words.

“Howay the lads,” he called to the thousands hoping to catch a glimpse of him outside Newcastle civic centre.

And they were hanging on his every word from that moment onwards.

Your Chronicle reported: “They packed the airport. They packed the streets, they packed the area outside the civic centre and they opened their hearts to him.”

President Carter had only been in the White House a few months before coming to the North East.

Dr Michael Cullinane, senior lecturer in US history at Northumbria University, said the visit was a “seminal moment”.

“It doesn’t get any bigger in terms of getting an American President visiting Newcastle. This was a huge event.

“This was linked together with labour issues, he’s a Democratic President and he comes and shows himself to be a man of the people by saying ‘Howay the lads’.”

Hugh White, the lord mayor of Newcastle, had introduced President Carter to the stage.

He said: “Mr President, sir, you are a Georgian, you have now become a Geordie.”

“I’m very grateful to be a Geordie now,” Carter replied.

Dr Cullinane believes it was the relaxed nature of the visit and the local references sprinkled in by Carter that made it so unique.

He said: “It’s a shame we’ve been unable to recreate that. In Ireland, presidential visits are often much more informal and when the President and Taoiseach are in America it’s often the same.

“When Obama was in Ireland last year he drank a pint of Guinness and got up in Dublin and said he was missing the apostrophe.

“The visit by Carter had all of those things marking out Newcastle as a regional place of significance. I can’t think of any other visit that was so similarly relaxed.”

Dr Cullinane isn’t surprised the visit is remembered fondly.

“I spoke to one woman recently that said she remembered everything from the visit,” he said. “It was one of those seminal moments. The PM visiting is a big deal in itself but having two of the world’s most powerful politicians in the same place at the same time is a bigger deal.”

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